


Within You

by etoile_etiolee



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Mpreg, Pregnant Jensen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoile_etiolee/pseuds/etoile_etiolee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as he can remember, Jensen had wanted kids. Being raised in the in foster homes, he's always felt some sort of emptiness inside of him, that only a child of his own could fill. Now he's happily married to Jared and soon enough, he finds himself pregnant. It's a dream come true, until an aneurism rupture puts him into a coma. Jared needs to face the fact that he might be raising their child alone after all, as the months go by and Jensen's due date comes irremediably closer. </p><p>Happy ending, guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within You

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to yokhobennington and disneymagics for the beta work. Thanks to disneymagics for her tremendous work into helping me to make this story less passive. 
> 
> Thanks to bt_kady for the wonderful art.
> 
> Disclaimer: All lies, people.
> 
> Author's ramblings:o. Since RL had decided to seriously mess with me this spring, some of you already know that this story wasn't the one that I was supposed to post. I found myself three days from the dead line and decided I should still try to make it. I had to pick a plot I've been thinking about for a long time that could be told in around 20k. That's why I used the exclusive first person narration technique. A unique POV, told by one of the characters, would allow me to write something simple around a more complicated story. My character -Jared- tells only what he wants to tell, and the way he wants to. I made it to the dead line, and I'm still not sure how I feel about this story. It's different from everything I've written before, more intimate. Some of you might find this story a little too schmoopy for your taste, but it's wanted. Since Jared tells the story about Jensen's pregnancy, he doesn't censor himself. We see Jensen through the eyes of someone who loves him very deeply, and we get how Jared's world collapsed when his husband fell into a coma. I hope this explanation make sense, and I hope you will enjoy the story.

_Jensen always wanted kids. I remember, it’s one of the first things he told me when we started dating more seriously, that he was a carrier, and that he wanted kids. I agreed with him –hell, I had just met the boy I wanted to spend my life with, I would have agreed if he told me he wanted us to live in the mountains as recluses and brush our teeth with beaver grease. Anyway, I don’t know if it was the fact that he’d grown up in a foster home and needed to feel grounded, to have a future biologically speaking, or maybe it had to do with carrier hormones –probably a mix of both. He was eighteen at the time, I was twenty-two and the thought of having kids… sure, why not, in a decade, right? I guess what I mean is, it all seemed so far away and, at the time, I didn’t realized how important it really was for Jensen, how intricate a part of his personality it was. Later, yeah, it kind of jumped in my face, and I think that's the story I want to tell. I want to write about my husband’s incredible strength and will to live, to bring our baby safely into this world. It’s the least I can do._

My name is Jared Padalecki, I’m from Texas, and I moved to New Hampshire when I started college. I’ve always liked literature, and for a while I thought I would become a writer. My career choice made my mother upset. She said I wouldn’t be able to earn a reasonable living from writing. I settled for studying accounting which might seem weird, but I always liked numbers and the logic behind them. They're absolute. Two plus two will always equal four. I guess it’s reassuring for me. The prospect of a career in a bank or a private company was way more comforting than thinking about writing night and day for months and then having my manuscript refused by publishers. I love writing, it will always be a part of me and I know I’ll never stop doing it, even if it doesn’t lead me anywhere. But I’m an anxious guy and numbers have always helped me to cope with my anxiety. Anyway, I fell in love with Manchester when I moved here and, although deep down I’ll always be a Texan, I quickly decided that I would love to settle here. The environment is more gay-friendly than in my hometown. Then again, everywhere is more gay-friendly than Texas.

I met Jensen Ackles during my junior year of college. He was a freshman and worked part time at the café I used to frequent. Jensen’s the one who took the first step. I’m not exactly shy –reserved, maybe? I didn’t have a lot of experience in relationships and, to me, he was mind-blowing. He could have had any guy he wanted, so why would he be interested in a future accountant with tangled hair who looked like he never got used to his freakishly tall body? Anyway, he always took time to chat with me, smiling, joking, touching me on the shoulder or the arm. He always put way too much whipped cream on the top of my mochaccino and sometimes even added little color sprinkles. I must have seemed so oblivious to him, because it lasted months before he finally sat down at my table on a sunny early April morning, and boldly asked me if I was gay, because he was, and he wondered if I’d go on a date with him. I agreed, dumbstruck. A week later, as we were making out in my old rusted car, he panted in my ear that he thought I would never get a clue, that he was crazy for me, had been since the first time he saw me and that he was starting to become desperate. I think I came then. Shouldn’t write that down. What the hell, it’s not like I think this will ever be read by anyone, and if so, well, I’ll just take off the NC-17 passages. 

Jensen was… everything. Gorgeous, outgoing, kind, generous, one of the funniest guys around. He wasn’t exactly exuberant in his sexuality, but he wasn’t shy about it either. I remember thinking: wow it’s like he’s decided to enjoy every hour of every day, whether it's spent serving coffee, studying, or fucking, and I realized I had missed it my whole life, someone like Jensen, or you know, just Jensen. He was barely eighteen and I wanted to take it slow. I guess it felt a little like I was taking advantage. He wouldn’t have any of it though. He had been with guys before, but he’d never gone “all the way” like we used to say when we were young. It happened for the first time a month after our first date, and when I finally slid into him, he started crying. I panicked. I tried to pull back, but he held on to me, and he said, “Don’t you dare, it’s just intense. It’s good.” Later, he told me he loved me, and that maybe it was a mistake so soon in our relationship, but he couldn’t keep it inside. I told him it didn’t matter, because I loved him too. We were two giant saps. We still are, I guess.

The thing with Jensen, at the time, was this underlying layer of fragility that was hidden beneath the surface, beneath the laughter and the energy, the enthusiasm, and kindness. It took me a while to understand it. I was an idiot. Two months into our relationship, he knew everything about me: my parent’s names, what they did for a living, my difficult relationship with my older brother, and my phobia of water. He knew that when I was four, I got stung on the dick by a wasp that had gotten caught in my underwear. He knew that when I told my parents I was gay, I was so scared about their reaction I had a fit of vomiting so violent my mother wanted to take me to the ER. He knew I liked to count by twos, only odd numbers, when I was nervous and wanted to calm myself down. I could go on and on. I had never so easily shared my most intimate thoughts with anyone before meeting Jensen, and I didn’t realized how little I knew about him until he asked me to dinner because “Ty” wanted to meet me. The only thing I knew about this Ty guy was that he was a “friend” with whom Jensen lived, along with a girl named Felicia. I had never met them. They lived outside of town. I for myself had a small, two-rooms apartment so it always seemed more practical for Jensen and me to hang out at my place, which we had to ourselves. I didn’t think about who they really were, or how important they were in Jensen’s life. Maybe because he was so good at distracting me, avoiding my questions or changing the subject.

Another thing I didn't realize was how often I woke up at night to find him up, staring out the window in the dark. I never stopped and asked myself if it happened every night. Or why he was so silent and withdrawn during those moments. Everything was so new to me, everything was Jensen, and love, and sex, and staring into his wonderful, bright green eyes. I knew the essentials -at least that’s what I told myself. He was studying to become a physical therapist because he wanted to help people. He wasn’t into sports, even though he was in good shape. He was eighteen. His shoulders would broaden, his jaw become more prominent, but I knew he would remain delicate, like most carriers. He was proud of his status, of being part of the ten percent of men able to conceive and bear a child. When I asked about his parents, he told me he wasn’t in contact with them, and that he didn’t want to talk about it. I figured it was probably linked to his coming out. Despite society being generally more tolerant and accepting in recent years, I had some friends who’d been thrown out of their homes or sent to those horrible Christian Camps to get “cured”. Jensen’s reluctance to talk about his relationship with his parents wasn’t that surprising, and I figured he would talk about it when was ready.

It came as a total surprise when I accepted the dinner invitation and he told me we had some things to discuss. He became very nervous and couldn’t even look me in the eyes. I was worried something was going on, something serious, like he was sick or something. 

“Ty isn’t my friend, technically he’s my surrogate father,” he finally said in a soft, tiny voice. “I don’t remember my parents. I know I was put in a foster home at age four because of mistreatment. I didn't have a real home until I was fifteen. Went from family to family, foster homes as well, until Ty took me in. He and his wife couldn't have kids so they became foster parents. When his wife died, he kept on going. Felicia is another orphan, she’s lived with him for the past eight years. She’s my age. They’re my family.”

Jensen seemed so embarrassed about it. He cried. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know why he had felt the need to withhold the information until two months into our relationship. I remember wanting to take the pain away, needing him to know there was nothing to be embarrassed about, that I loved him. We talked a lot that night, and some things began to make sense. I understood so much more about him suddenly. His need to be loved and appreciated, his desire to please after being rejected again and again, trapped in a system that’s anything but perfect. His insomnia which, he told me, would come and go. He'd wake up in a cold sweat and wouldn’t know where he was for a few seconds. It took some time for him to calm down. He thought it was because of all those years when he wasn't sure how much time he would spend in a given place. He had trouble trusting people when he first came to live with Ty, and even then, after working hard on the issue with his surrogate father, he still had to fight the doubt that invaded his mind. What if he wasn’t good enough, funny enough, useful enough? Would his friends still be his friends? Would Ty keep him around, would I still love him? I protested, of course. I would love him no matter what, it wasn’t a question of how useful he was to me. He told me he knew it wasn’t logical, he knew it didn’t make sense, but it was hard getting over it. And from that moment on, I never forgot where Jensen came from, and how his past influenced the man he was becoming.

Ty Olson was a great guy, who was paying for Jensen’s college even though legally he didn’t have to provide for him any longer since Jensen was eighteen. He lived in a big house out of town which had at times been the home to up to six kids, some of whom he remained in contact with. Since his wife’s death, he’d slowed down the cadence, because he had to work and couldn’t be as present. When I met Jensen, another of his kids, Gil, had just left. He was older than Jensen and now had a job and an apartment of his own. Felicia and Jensen would be Ty’s last kids. He told me wasn’t getting any younger and he wanted to take time for his now grown up children and his dogs. He made it clear to me that he would hunt me down and hurt me if I ever caused Jensen any pain. I liked him immediately, as well as Felicia, a scrawny red-head girl who seemed crazy in love with Jensen and was just as full of life as him. They became my second family.

Is there anything else to tell? There is a French saying that states that there is no story to tell about happy people, and I guess that's true. We were happy and there's not much more to tell about that part of our lives. After college, I found a job in a small community bank. Jensen and I moved into an apartment halfway between the university campus and my work place. He graduated with honors at twenty-two years old and, that very day, I asked him to marry me. He said yes. 

We got married August the 15th, in a small, civic ceremony. My parents and little sister came all the way from Texas. Ty, Gil and Felicia were there, as well as a bunch of our friends and Kim, a social worker who had been responsible for Jensen during his years in the foster system. The only person missing was my brother, but we hadn’t talked in years and my parents made the effort not to mention him. So, it was almost a perfect day.

We decided to wait for our honeymoon. Jensen had just started working for the Manchester’s rehabilitation center. Money wasn’t exactly flowing, but we were happy just to be together. We figured if we waited a year we could enjoy a longer vacation and travel out of the country. That doesn’t mean we didn’t fuck like bunnies the night of our wedding, like it was the first time all over again, and Jensen, god, so beautiful, naked, cover in sweat, his face red, his chest heaving –Jensen kept repeating he couldn’t wait to get pregnant, if it could happen right then he would be over the moon. It scared me a little. I talked to him the morning after, while we were enjoying mimosas and eating chocolate in bed. I didn’t want to ruin our wedding night and the feeling of euphoria we were sharing but I needed to know exactly where he was coming from.

“So, were you serious last night, or was it just me being too hot for you to handle so you said everything that passed through your mind?”

Jensen looked away from the TV, where some cheesy reality show was playing without the sound.

“What do you mean?”

“Making babies.” I took a piece of chocolate and fed it to him. He licked his lips. I loved it when he did that.

Jensen took the time to eat the chocolate then cast me an uncertain look. “Well… you always say you want kids just as much as I do so I figured…”

“Don’t you want to wait? You’ve just started working and money is still tight. I don’t… I figured we would buy a house first and then-”

Jensen’s reaction was immediate. His cheeks became red, his lips reduced to a thin line. He shook his head and lowered his eyes to avoid my stare. “That could take years. Waiting to have enough money, then a house, and then what? What if it doesn’t work when we finally try?”

“We don’t know that. I mean, I get how important it is for you, and it’s important for me too, but I think we should enjoy each other for a couple of years before we have a baby.”

“If that’s what you want,” Jensen murmured, and it was clear how upset he was by what I was saying.

“I want you to be happy,” I said, grabbing his chin so that he had to look at me. His eyes swam with unshed tears. I felt like a jerk. 

“Yeah well, I want you to be happy too,” Jensen protested, trying for a smile that came out small and sad. “I won’t force you into becoming a parent if you’re not ready. I… I know the logic, Jay, I’m not stupid. I just… it’s something I need, you know. It’s like an empty space inside of me and… I want it so badly.”

We didn’t fight. We rarely fought. He was too sweet, and I was too cerebral for anything to escalate. It doesn’t mean our relationship was perfect. Maybe sometimes a good fight would have been better than working so slowly through our issues. I don’t know, I’m no psychologist. All I know is that from that moment I realized how important having kids really was for Jensen, and that I didn’t want to hurt him in any way. I wasn’t ready to have a baby, but is anyone ever? Besides, the thought of making a brand new human being with the man I loved, a combination and me and him, was kind of seductive. I asked him for six months, because I knew if I told him we could start right away he would fear I was only succumbing to the pressure. The smile he gave me was worth any doubts I still had. Jensen wanted a baby and I would give him one. If he’d wanted the moon I would’ve probably tried to get it for him too.

_____ 

We were married, we both had a job and we were happy. The first thing we did was to look for a bigger apartment with enough room for a family of three. Jensen was really close to Ty and I knew he had told him about his intention of getting pregnant in a few months. One evening, Jensen came back from a visit with him really excited, and told me Ty had offered to help us buy a house. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it at first; the thought of owing that much money to someone wasn’t exactly something I was excited about. Jensen seemed surprised by my reaction. 

“I don’t understand, Jay. He just wants to help us with the loan, you know, put a down payment on a house.”

“But doesn’t it bother you? Owing money to someone. I mean, if we wait a couple of years, we’ll be able to do it ourselves and-“

“And then we’ll have to move, again, with a baby. It’s simpler this way. We could settle down in our own house before I even get pregnant, it would be great.”  
I still must have looked unconvinced because he sighed and took my arm softly.

“You don’t get it. Ty has money, he doesn’t really care about it, not in the way most people do. He says it’s there to be spent and he doesn’t know what to do with it anyway. He wants to help me. Help us.”

It was difficult to resist Jensen, especially when he was looking at me with so much hope and faith in his eyes. I agreed, on the condition that this money was borrowed, not given, and that we would make some arrangement to reimburse Ty. He accepted, but he wasn’t really listening at that point. He was focused on his plan: buying a house, getting pregnant. Getting pregnant, most of all. I could only hope that having a child would give him what he so obviously needed. Jensen might have been kind and sweet, but he was also determined, another layer of him I had discovered over the years. If he wanted something, he wouldn’t stop until he had it. 

We found a house not too far away from Ty’s, which was obviously a factor Jensen had taken into account, even if he hadn’t told me. I didn’t mind. As I said, Ty was like a second father to me. The neighborhood was great, there was a large backyard and the house had been recently renovated. I have to admit I panicked; spent evenings going over our income and expenditures, making sure we would be able to make the monthly payments. Jensen kept saying we were going to be fine, but I needed proof, on paper, that it was doable.

It was, although money would be tight. Since the house had been recently renovated, there wasn’t much to do to get it ready. We moved in five months after our wedding. By that time, Jensen was already getting ready to become pregnant. He took folic acid and other vitamins, started to mark on the calendar the days of the month when he would be ovulating. It was all very complicated because carriers don’t really have periods, just a little fluid lost every month; most of the time, they don’t even realize it. Something to do with the anal walls absorbing most of the blood lost. I was never a specialist in carrier anatomy, and I trusted Jensen to know his own body. He took his temperature everyday with a special graded thermometer to look out for the slight fluctuations that would tell him when he was ovulating. He also used a bunch of tests, similar to a pregnancy test, that could detect in urine if he was fertile or not.

Jensen was ready and, true to my word, one month after moving in, we started trying. Jensen was so eager and intense. We fucked at least twice a day for five days in a row. Afterward, he would stay in bed and bend his knees up to his chest, because he had read that it was a sure method to keep the sperm inside of him for as long as possible. There was this sparkle of hope in his eyes, in the soft smile quirking his lips, and whenever I looked at him, it was like I was falling in love all over again. I knew he would be disappointed if it didn’t work, so I tried to talk to him about it, citing statistics and percentages. He laughed and told me it was okay, that making a baby was the fun part and that he wouldn’t mind going at it for another month or two. 

Except it was bullshit. Around the time his period was due, he took a pregnancy test. He didn’t tell me, I found it in the trashcan of our bathroom. It was negative. Jensen had come home earlier than me and he was lying on our bed. At first I thought he was napping, but I went back to him after finding the pregnancy test, lied down next to him and wrapped my arm around his thin waist, so that we were spooning. I could feel him breathing unevenly, like he’d been crying. His body was hot against mine.

“It was the first time we tried,” I murmured in his ear. “We’ll do it again next month. It’s no big deal, Jensen.”

“I know, that’s what I keep telling myself,” he answered in a thin, tired voice. 

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m insane.”

“What? Where the hell is that coming from?”

Jensen shifted in my arms until he was on his back, looking at me. His eyes were swollen and red. “This… need I have, inside. It’s so strong, it’s not logical, and it’s been that way ever since I found out I was a carrier when I was a teenager. I know it has something to do with being stuck in the system, going from place to place and feeling like I didn’t belong. Hell, I was fourteen and sometimes I thought about getting fucked, by anybody really, just so I could become pregnant. Then, it would feel like I finally belonged, like I had something. Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t crazy?”

I did what he asked of me. It wasn’t difficult, because I was telling the truth. “It’s not crazy, Jen. With the way you grew up, it’s not crazy at all. I’m not saying it’s logical either, because it isn’t. It’s just who you are. You waited until we got married to ask, and I know all the waiting must have been difficult, but it means even though this need is more emotional than anything else, you can still consider it from a logical point of view. You wanna know what I think? You are amazing.”

Jensen snorted derisively, but he turned to wrap his arms around me and shoved his face in the crook of my neck. “We’ll keep trying, right?”

“Of course. Fucking is the fun part. You said it yourself.”

It made him laugh, and I felt better. I was still worried, though: what if we kept trying without any results? How many months before Jensen wouldn’t be able to take it anymore and broke down?

Luckily, that didn’t happen. It only took another month.

The bank where I worked was a small institution where everybody knew each other. The working environment was great. It was my fourth year there and I was hoping to get promoted in a few months. My direct superior, a woman called Danneel, was only two years older than me and a great boss; patient, funny, always polite and delicate when she asked me to do something or to revise a paper I had given her. I felt good there.

Jensen never visited me at work. The rehabilitation Center was almost half an hour away, and that was without counting the occasional traffic problems. We had once tried to meet halfway for lunch and ended up spending ten minutes together eating in a rush without being able to exchange more than a few words. On the other hand, our working hours were approximately the same and we left at the same time in the morning. There was still plenty of time to see each other.

All of this to say, I knew something was either very wrong or very good when I heard a knock at my door and my husband’s voice. It was April the fourth, around ten in the morning. I noticed in my agenda. 

“Come in.”

“The receptionist said it was okay,” Jensen said as an introduction. He was smiling, looking excited, short of breath. His hair was mussed up, his t-shirt full of wrinkles and by the old jeans and sneakers he was wearing, it was evident he wasn’t coming from work.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” Jensen said, circling my desk and dragging my chair back, then turning it so I was facing him.

“I’m pregnant,” he added, bending to kiss me. 

“Are you serious?” I didn’t think it would work so soon. To be honest, I was dumbstruck, like it had come out of nowhere, like it hadn’t been the sole focus of Jensen’s life ever since we got married. Life is strange like that sometimes. 

Jensen showed me a pregnancy test similar to the one I had found in the trashcan, except this time, there was a little plus sign in the plastic window. I took it between my fingers and stared at it, probably longer than I thought because when I looked back at Jensen, he was chewing on his bottom lip and observing me with wide, anxious eyes.

“You’re not happy?” He asked softly.

“Yes, fuck, sorry, of course I am. Guess I’m in shock. I thought it would take longer and… Seriously, there’s a tiny thing inside of you? That we made together?”

Jensen nodded, his bright smile returning. I was happy, maybe more to see him happy than because I was going to be a father. Not that I didn’t want to. I still just had to process the reality of it all. 

I got up and took him in my arms, lifting him off the floor. He laughed, his head tilted back, and I remember thinking how young he was –not even twenty-three years old, and that he seemed younger, like some of the innocence from his childhood remained with him. Maybe it was a piece he’d protected through the years, intact, while he lost everything else in the foster care system. I don’t know, but yes, it was a happy moment. When I put him down, he swayed on his feet and I kept both my arms wrapped around his waist.

“I'm having trouble believing it too,” he admitted. 

“Those tests, are they really reliable?”

“99% accurate. False negatives can happen. False positives are almost impossible… But you know, just to be sure…”

Jensen rummaged through the bag he was carrying and took out two other tests, blushing. They were obviously from different brands. One was electronic, and the little plus sign was flashing on the digital screen. The other had two parallel lines.

“All positives,” Jensen told me. “I went a little crazy.”

“Naw, you just acted like I would have,” I replied. He knew how I was, always double checking everything, just to be sure. We all have our quirks.

“So yeah, we need to find an androcologist, and we… Should we wait before we tell everyone?”

“Why?”

“Usually, well… some people wait for the end of the first trimester which is like… three months, because the probabilities of a miscarriage are higher then.”

“We’ll do what you want,” I told him because, knowing Jensen, he wouldn’t be able to hold out that long.

I was right. But he did hold on longer than I expected. Two weeks later, when I arrived home after work, I saw Felicia’s car parked in the driveway. Felicia was still in college, completing a degree in psychology at the Portsmouth campus of Southern New Hampshire University. It wasn’t that long of a ride between the two cities, but she was living on campus and there wasn’t a week that passed without her visiting, or Jensen going to visit her. Felicia and Jensen were really close, and I knew they shared a past I would never truly understand. Maybe I was a little jealous, but I adored Felicia almost as much as Jensen did. She was a smart, active red-head who was a dangerously good volley-ball player, despite her short frame. She and Jensen shared a common passion for online games. They would log onto _League of Legends_ and play together for hours. Jensen had been addicted when we first met, but since I didn’t share his interest, he had gradually reduced his frequency until he only played if Felicia was online, or if she was with him. Those were the only moments when Jensen used a language I can’t even repeat here. I’m no innocent, but I guess you would have to be there to understand. It was funny, hearing my oh-so-sweet husband swear like a trooper at his computer.

This time, though, they weren’t playing. Of course not. By the way Felicia ran toward me and threw herself in my arms, stuttering out congratulations between kisses, I knew Jensen hadn't been able to resist. He stood in the kitchen, his arms crossed defensively, but a smile quirked up his lips. “She guessed, I didn’t say anything,” he protested, blushing. I loved it when he blushed. Always have. Still do. 

“This is so awesome, I’m going to be an aunt and your kid will be astonishingly beautiful!” Felicia cooed, finally letting me go to hang herself from my left arm. 

“Of course he will.”

“Or she,” Jensen said. “Could be a girl.”

I shook my head, just to mess with him. “Naw, we’re having a little boy. And now that you’ve broken the three months rule, can I call my parents?”

This whole pregnancy thing was starting to grow on me. I’m not saying I didn’t want a kid, but it was so intense for Jensen I couldn’t help but feel like maybe, I wasn’t reacting properly. Why wasn’t I as excited, as enthusiastic? Every night when we went to bed, Jensen talked about the baby, and what he –or she- would look like, and what color he wanted to paint the room, and what kind of delivery he would prefer. I told him one night that maybe he should save some conversations for later, because we had nine months to go and, for now, the baby was barely a spermatozoid without a tail in the middle of an uvula. He laughed and agreed that yes, maybe he was overreacting, but I saw the shadow of hurt darkening his eyes for a second and I felt bad about it. Jensen wouldn’t reproach me for it. It took a lot for him to say he was mad about something. That was one of the issues we’d faced since we started going out together. Jensen was so scared of screwing up our relationship, or any relationship, really, that most of the time, he preferred to just let it go: even if someone was an asshole to him, he brushed it off instead of protesting. I could –more or less- take it when he acted that way with friends, but not with me. I’m not perfect, I never pretended to be, and when I did something upsetting, I wanted him to tell me, to react, to protest. Sometimes, we argued because I knew he was mad at me, deep down, but wouldn’t tell me. It was important to me that he understood we were equals, that I loved him just as much as he loved me and that he had the right to speak his mind, even if I wouldn’t necessarily like it. He had made some progress, but his extremely compliant nature would always be a part of him.

The night following my comment about saving it for the upcoming months, Jensen was reading silently, and I knew he was refraining from speaking about the pregnancy. The way his face lit up when I asked him if he had any ideas for boy's and girl's names… I knew I had hurt him, and that I was already forgiven.

It might seem like the man I’m describing isn’t real, too sweet and perfect to exist except in the eyes of his loving husband. But no, that really is Jensen. And there isn’t a day that goes by without me realizing how lucky I am to be loved by someone like him.

We ended up announcing the pregnancy to my parents during a Skype session, which allowed me to see my mom losing her shit and jumping everywhere while my father shook his head slowly, rolling his eyes at us. Soon after, my sister Megan knew, and Ty, and Gil, and then our friends and our work colleagues. Jensen was six weeks along when he got anxious about it all of a sudden. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut, maybe it really was bad luck to announce a pregnancy so early? Luckily for him, he has the most down to earth husband in the world, and I quickly and efficiently reassured him. 

_____

Jensen’s pregnancy was a perfect one: no morning sickness, no tiredness, a small but perfect baby bump that rounded his normally flat stomach at around the end of the third month. He was healthy and young and full of energy. Carriers sometimes experience difficult pregnancies with pelvis pain that can become debilitating. Not Jensen. He put on weight gradually, just the right amount according to the charts. His due date was October 30. He was excited about possibly giving birth on Halloween.

Our androcologist was a woman in her early thirties named Genevieve Cortese, and I liked her immediately. She understood how important this pregnancy was to Jensen and she was fantastic with him, always reassuring, always ready to answer his never-ending questions. On the 20th of May, we had an ultrasound planned for Jensen’s 18th week of pregnancy, the one where Dr. Cortese would be able to determine if we were going to have a boy or a girl. Jensen was a nervous mess. That morning, I joked that I wanted to wait to know the gender until the baby was born and he snapped at me, which never happened. This was important for him.

Dr. Cortese knew that too, and she decided to start the appointment with the sonogram instead of asking her usual questions and doing the physical exam. She helped Jensen relax by making him do breathing exercises. He was so eager to know and see our baby on screen it was difficult to get through to him, but she did. 

I was excited too. The first ultrasound Dr. Cortese had done was early in the pregnancy, and it was difficult to see anything other than a shrimp with a giant head, and only if I squinted at the sonogram screen really hard. Of course, we had heard the baby’s heartbeat, but I’m sure everyone who’s ever been pregnant understands how the mid-pregnancy ultrasound is important and exciting.

We saw our baby, we saw it sucking its thumb, moving its tiny legs. Jensen held my hand so hard I could feel my heart beating in my palm. Everything was perfect, the baby’s dimensions, the location of the placenta, the umbilical cord. It didn’t take long for Dr. Cortese to find the baby’s gender. It spread its legs like it wanted to accommodate us. “You guys are going to have a little girl,” she told us, smiling at the both of us. 

I’m the one who burst out crying. I was as surprised as Jensen by my reaction. Not that I preferred a girl to a boy, it just made everything so much more real. I wasn’t the one carrying our baby and it was sometimes difficult for me to relate to Jensen’s intense emotions, but during that ultrasound, I, for the first time, could picture myself holding a tiny baby in my arms. My daughter.

Jensen raised himself up on his elbows and stretched one hand to grab my neck, forcing me to bend down so he could hug me. “We’re gonna have a little girl,” he murmured in my ear. 

We were. 

For me, from the beginning of the pregnancy until the end of June, everything was perfect. I was happy, Jensen was happy, more so than I'd ever seen him, which was saying something because generally, Jensen was an easy-going, happy guy. He was one of the few people who had learned to enjoy the simple things, to find the silver lining in every situation, but Jensen pregnant? He was twice as gorgeous, energetic, enthusiast. He looked like he’d finally found a missing piece of himself, and his happiness was contagious. Then again, maybe that’s just me, embellishing my memories, because of the hell we would soon go through. I don’t mind. Every moment of those first six months deserves to be cherished. I’m being overly emotional about it, but really, who can blame me? It’s strange, thinking back about those first six months. I can’t really remember anything going wrong, but maybe my brain is only trying to compensate for what happened next. 

_____

 

I remember the day it all went wrong as clearly as if it just happened. It was the 1st of July and we were working in the baby’s nursery. Jensen and Felicia painted the walls while I tried to assemble the crib. It was still early, maybe nine or ten in the morning. The day was shaping up to be a hot one and we thought it would be better to do as much work as possible before noon. The color we had picked was a soft, grayish blue. Jensen wanted the nursery to be a calming environment. The furniture was white, as well as the curtains. We planned on wallpapering one of the walls with a sheep pattern. Jensen liked sheep, he had already bought several stuffed ones, and he had chosen the wallpaper early on. 

Jensen was wearing paternity jeans and one of my old t-shirts, not wanting to get paint on the few paternity pieces he owned –those clothes aren’t cheap. The t-shirt was white, with a blue boat drawn on it –I don’t even know where it came from, but I remember how tight it was, moulding to Jensen’s stomach so that the boat was misshapen and stretched. Jensen had a blue bandana tied around his head, his face was full of freckles because of a day spent outside earlier that week. He was in a good mood, joking with Felicia while painting the edges of the room. She already had a large paint splotch on her cheek, some in her hair, and kept saying that we were crazy to let her hold a brush. I was seated on the ground, carefully reading the instructions on how to assemble the crib before getting started. Music played in the background on the radio. T-Rex. _Children of the Revolution._ Felicia sang along.

Jensen was facing the wall, painting the corner, when he stopped suddenly. He turned toward me, very slowly. His face was white as a sheet.

“Hey, you okay?” I asked, not really concerned yet. Felicia was still singing from the top of her lungs.

“My head,” Jensen said in a strange, detached voice. “It hurts.”

I got up to walk toward him. I didn’t like how dark his eyes looked. His pupils were fully dilated. It seemed abnormal. “Maybe it’s the smell of the paint,” I said.

“It’s strange… I was okay and then… fuck it hurts.”

Jensen’s hands shook. I took the brush and paint container out of his hands and put them on the floor, then I slid an arm around his waist. “Come on, maybe you should lie down for a while. We ran so many errands yesterday, you must be exhausted.”

Jensen didn’t move. He winced. “God, it’s like… I don’t feel so good, Jay.”

“I know, come on, let’s get you out of here.”

“Jen, are you okay?”

Felicia had stopped singing and was staring at us. I didn’t answer, neither did Jensen. I dragged him along, but it was like he didn’t know how to walk anymore. He hit the paint canister with his left foot and it spilled all over the protective sheets that were on the floor. “I’m… s-s-suh-sorry,” he stuttered, not even looking down.

“No worries, I’ll clean it up,” Felicia told him in an over-enthusiastic voice, so false it made me cringe. She looked at me with wide eyes, clearly worried.

We made it out of the room and a few step into the corridor when Jensen stopped following me. “Oh my god, my head, Jay, something is wrong, my head,” he moaned as his knees buckled. 

I was still holding him and we both went down. I helped him lie back against the wall. Violent shivers coursed through his body and his now paler face was covered in sweat. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he tried to grab me. “It hurts, it hurts so bad make it stop Jay please…”

“Okay, alright, try to breathe for me Jensen.”

By that time, my idea that the smell of the paint and tiredness were making him ill quickly flew out the window. He looked like he was in so much pain, confused and terrified, that panic rose from the pit of my stomach. That’s when his eyes rolled back. I grabbed his face. “Jensen? Jen! Talk to me, please, hey, Jensen!”

His head fell to the right and he started vomiting, his body convulsing, but he wasn’t really there, he was just letting it happen. There was vomit on me, and him, and on the floor, and he was choking, dry-heaving, sucking huge, difficult gulps of air.

“Jared? What’s wrong with him?” 

Felicia stood next to me, and I wondered where the hell she'd come from. Her question snapped me from my immobility. 

“Call an ambulance,” I snapped at her.

“What's happening to-“

“I don’t know, fuck, call an ambulance now!” I yelled at her.

She ran. Jensen’s vomiting had come to an end in the meantime. His body was lax, his eyes open to mere slits, his expression frozen in a grimace of pain. I took off my shirt and wiped the vomit off his face the best as I could, then I laid him down on his left side, something I vaguely remembered from a high school first aid class. I kept saying his name. Jensen wouldn’t answer, only letting out small moans. I was so scared. I wanted to shake him awake, yell at him, bring him back with the sole power of my will. I don’t know how many minutes passed like that. Felicia came back, speaking quickly into the phone. And then she was speaking to me.

“Is he conscious? Jared!”

“What?”

“They want to know if he’s conscious.”

“No, I don’t think so, he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t move…”

I was petting Jensen’s hair. His bandana had fallen, I don’t know at which moment. He blinked and, suddenly, he was back, looking straight at me.

“It hurts,” he whispered. 

“I know baby, it’s okay, we called an ambulance, you’re gonna be alright.”

Tears started flowing from his eyes and he moved his right hand in the air. “The baby,” he croaked. 

He was trying to touch his belly. I grabbed his hand and put it on his stomach. He sighed. “Jay, the baby,” he repeated, and his eyes rolled back once again.

He didn’t answer me after that. When the paramedics arrived, Felicia was hysterical. I was still crouched near Jensen on the ground, touching him, speaking nonsense about how he would be okay, how much I loved him, and that he shouldn’t scare me like this.

They got me out of the way when they saw Jensen's condition. They worked quickly, snapping at each other, getting the oxygen, taking his vital signs. If I had yet to realize how serious it was, that was the last proof I needed.

I wasn’t allowed in the ambulance. We followed. Felicia drove.

I lost all sense of time. We waited in a small room apart from the waiting room of the ER. Ty joined us, then Gil. Felicia kept repeating what had happened, like a broken record, Gil sat, completely immobile, and Ty tried to calm Felicia down. I think I was pacing. I didn't speak, I just wanted someone –anyone wearing scrubs - to tell me that it was alright, that we’d panicked for nothing and that Jensen had just had some pregnancy faintness or his blood sugar level was low or… anything really, because I already knew, on some level, that it was way more serious than that. Jensen’s vacant expression wouldn’t leave my mind and it hurt, physically, to imagine what he must have gone through and how much pain he'd been in. 

I never thought about calling my parents. I wasn’t really there. Later, Ty told me we waited an hour before we had any news. The doctor who came to see us was a neurologist, which was already bad news. He looked like some kind of nobleman from the last century, almost as tall as me with a grey beard and a mass of curly grey hair. His name was Tim Omundson, and we would have the opportunity to become very well acquainted with each other, but I didn’t know any of that at the time, I didn’t even ask him for his name. “What’s going on?” Ty asked, and then my world crumbled.

Dr. Omundson told us Jensen had suffered an aneurism rupture. 

I knew a brain aneurism was something bad happening in the brain, I knew it could be fatal, but that was about it. 

“Are you fucking kidding me; he’s twenty-three years old!” Ty practically yelled, which made Felicia burst into tears all over again.

“Wait, wait, I… I don’t understand,” I said, pushing Ty so that I could be face to face with the neurologist. “Can I go see him? Is he okay?”

“He’s… not okay,” Dr. Omundson told me with so much compassion in his eyes it was hard not to look away. “He’s undergoing a delicate procedure right now. Please, Mr…”

“Padalecki.”

“Please, let me explain. An aneurism is like a bubble filled with blood in the brain. People don’t know it’s there because it doesn’t have any symptoms. For some, it will never be discovered, and they’ll go through their life without even realizing it’s there. But in some cases, the aneurism ruptures, and that’s what happened to Jensen.”

We were all speaking at once, asking questions, even Gil, who'd been silent until then. He was generally quiet and withdrawn due to a really rough upbringing.

“What we need to do now is to stop the blood flow before there is any more damage. It’s a procedure called coiling and that’s what is happening right now. Jensen is in surgery.”

“Oh my god, is it, are they like… opening his skull?” Felicia asked, and it made me sick, imagining it. I think that’s when my knees buckled, because the next thing I knew Ty and Gil were sitting me on a chair. 

“We are not opening his skull. The neurosurgeon is inserting a catheter through one of his arteries. He’ll be able to reach the aneurysm and insert small platinum coils that will enable the blood to clot and prevent the aneurysm from reforming.”

“So that’s a good thing? What… what about the baby? Is the surgery dangerous for her?” I asked in a thin voice that sounded alien to me. 

Dr. Omundson lowered his eyes. When he spoke again, it was in a soft, sad voice. “There is danger for your baby. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, what you need to understand is-“

“What?” By then I was hysterical. “We’ll get to that in a minute? We’re talking about my daughter, do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Mr. Padalecki, your husband is dying.”

The doctor’s voice resonated in the waiting room. I couldn’t process the words, even though everyone around must have, because Gil and Felicia fell into each other’s arms and Ty shoved his head into his hands. 

“No he’s not, you said he was in surgery,” I protested.

I knew I wasn’t making any sense. But I didn’t want to make sense. I wanted to be home with my husband painting our little girl’s room.

“Surgery to save his life, but there is no guarantee it is going to work. I’m sorry to be so direct, Mr. Padalecki, but when your husband arrived at the E.R. he was already unresponsive. The damage done by the aneurysm can’t be undone. We can only try to stop the bleeding. I have to be frank: he might not survive the surgery, and even if he does, there is no guarantee he’s going to wake up. And if he wakes up, we don’t know how incapacitated he will be.”

I started yelling. Screaming at him to shut up. And then I had another blackout, found myself up and grabbing Dr. Omundson’s white coat, all the while yelling. Ty pulled me back. I was crying. He held me.

It’s hard to explain how you react when you receive news that devastating. You would have to go through something similar to understand. There are all these feelings that crush you, and you know, on some level, what is happening, but your brain refuses to process it completely. It’s like feeling numb and oversensitive at the same time. It’s so overwhelming, so alien to you, it’s hard to even remember.

And I don’t really want to remember that horrible day. Sadly for me, it’s engraved in my brain forever.

When I was calm enough, Dr. Omundson wanted to talk to me in private. I said no, because Jensen’s family was so important to him, their opinion mattered to me. Of course, it was about the baby. There was a possibility that the trauma of the aneurysm and the subsequent surgery would either trigger early labor or that my little girl would die in the womb. There was no way of telling, and in the process of trying to save Jensen’s life, nothing could be done about it. We would have to wait and see. Then, the terrible question came: Jensen was twenty-four weeks along. If labor couldn’t be stopped, the baby would be severely premature. Even with highly specialized care, there would be serious repercussions for the baby’s life, from long term breathing problems to severe mental impairment.

And I was asked to decide whether or not, if Jensen was to go into labour, and if the baby was still alive when it was born, if I wanted her to be saved or not. 

I couldn’t make that choice.

This baby was everything to Jensen –hell, she was my daughter too, but what if he got better and woke up with a flat stomach, asked for his baby, what would I tell him? On the other hand, wasn’t that selfish of me, condemning a child to a life of misery because I wanted her father to wake up and be able to cradle her in his arms? 

That’s what I told Dr. Omundson, that he couldn’t ask that of me. Ty asked the question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“Is being pregnant worsening Jensen’s condition? Would he have better chance if he wasn’t?”

I waited, holding my breath. 

“No, not at this point. You don’t have to make a decision right now, Mr. Padalecki. I just want you to know that if it happens, you will have to.”

Jensen and the baby both survived the surgery. He was immediately transferred to the intensive care unit. The neurosurgeon came to see us, showed us some kind of x-ray of Jensen’s head with darker thin lines zigzagging to join at a darker point, which was, apparently, the aneurysm. The surgery was a success, but the surgeon insisted on the fact that there had been some bleeding and that it would take time before the blood was absorbed through the brain, and even more time to assess the damage, if Jensen survived. We were told the next twenty-four hours would be critical, that for now, Jensen was still heavily sedated so his neurological state couldn’t be evaluated.

I was like an empty shell. The hurt was somewhere at the back of my mind and I couldn’t reach it. I was allowed fifteen minutes in the ICU, alone, given the critical state of my husband. I followed a nurse who explained to me that Jensen was on breathing support, and that there would be an impressive number of machines and tubes around him. She told me it would be a shock, but that I could sit next to him and hold his hand. 

I have to admit that my first reaction when I entered the glass cubicle was the urge to turn around and run toward the exit. I couldn’t recognize my husband, it couldn’t be him. He looked like a wax doll, immobile and lax, except for his chest rising mechanically with the artificial lung machine. His face was swollen, to the point he was almost unrecognizable. I sat there, shaking. The nurse was still with me. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Touch him. Talk to him. He might be unconscious, but it doesn’t mean he can’t hear you.”

I nodded and took Jensen’s hand in mine. It was cold and dry. I pressed it. I don’t know what I hoped for, maybe a small jerk, or his fingers fighting my grip, but it didn’t happen. I wanted to touch his belly, but there was some kind of monitor strapped on it, and my hand hovered a few centimeters away.

“That's to monitor of the baby’s vitals,” the nurse explained to me, pointing at one of the screen. “See, that’s its heartbeat. If Mr. Ackles has a contraction, this will also tell us.”

“How is she?” I asked.

“She?”

“It’s a girl.”

“She is doing okay. Her heartbeat is a little slow, which is normal, considering the anesthesia. You can touch his belly, just not directly on the monitor.”

I did. I had one hand covering Jensen’s, the other rubbing the side of his belly. The nurse left.

“I love you,” I said. “Come back to me, Jen.”

I repeated it again and again, until the nurse came back to tell me it was time to leave. I kissed my husband’s swollen cheek. It didn’t feel like it usually did.

My parents arrived from Richardson early the next morning. I hadn’t left the hospital, neither had Ty. Gil had forced Felicia to leave with him so that she could rest for a few hours. She was a shadow of herself, had cried so much it was like there wasn’t anything left in her. Ty and me, we didn’t talk much. Every four hours, we could go see Jensen for fifteen minutes. There weren’t any changes. The anesthesia was starting to wear off, but he was still unconscious. We were told that it was normal after a trauma to the brain, and that we would have to wait for a couple of days to really evaluate Jensen’s awakening state.

I collapsed into my mother’s arms when she and my father entered the waiting room of the ICU. I cried, for a long time. My sister had stayed in Texas. She was only sixteen. My brother was taking care of her. I didn’t want to hear anything about him. When mom mentioned Jeff, I made a scene. My big brother and I weren’t on speaking terms. As easy as my coming out had been with my parents, Jeff hadn’t accepted it. He’d changed his attitude toward me, until I had gotten angry and accused him of being homophobic. We had fought. We didn’t speak after that, and for some reason, just the mention of his name got me going. I needed an outlet for my anger. I don’t remember the rant I went into, except my father had to come and take me away from my mother who was standing there, in a shocked state. I was a wreck. I wanted Jensen. Awake. I wanted our baby to be okay. I didn’t understand how this could have happened to us.

In the afternoon, Dr. Omundson came to see us. We were all there. Felicia and Gil had come back around lunch time, both pale and silent. 

Jensen’s condition was stabilizing, the neurologist told us. He had made it through the first twenty-four hours, which was good news. He was still unresponsive, and we would have to be patient, but the fact that he had survived this long was a good sign. 

My parents took me back home so I could take a shower and maybe sleep a little. I followed without protesting. I was so exhausted I didn’t even feel awake. It was a shock to find the house in the same state I had left it the day before. I went into the nursery, saw the blue paint dried on the wall, the mess on the floor, and I cried, again. My mom forced me into a shower and then into bed. I slept, though not for long. When I woke, everything had been cleaned up. It didn’t make me feel any better. I just wanted to go back to the hospital, to see Jensen, to be with him and our baby. My dad forced me to eat a little, and I complied. Everything tasted of cardboard. Strange, what random memories your brain decides to remember so clearly.

The next two days are like a foggy movie in my mind, though. Most of the time was spent in the ICU waiting room. I was surrounded by members of my family and Jensen’s, they switched, maybe even taking shifts, but I wasn’t aware of it. I was just waiting for the next visit, the next chance to take my husband’s hand, to pet his hair, and rub his stomach, speaking to him, and my baby, pleading for them to come back to me. As for the rest, it’s vague.

Jensen’s neurological state was assessed forty-eight hours after his surgery. There had been some prior evaluations but they were tainted by the post-surgical state. After forty-eight hours, if he was going to wake up from the surgery, he should have done it. He didn’t. Dr. Omundson talked to me about the Glasgow Coma Scale and its different stages. I had no idea there were actual stages. For me, it was either awake and talking, or in a coma. As it turned out, there was a lot of in-between. Jensen reacted to pain and showed some reflexive movement, but that was all. He wasn’t brain dead, which is the deepest form of coma, but he was unconscious, didn’t react to voices or manipulation, and had no sleep-wake cycles. It wasn’t good. He was stable, the bleeding had been controlled, but if he remained in that comatose state more than two weeks, the prognosis wasn’t good. To be honest, it's much more elaborate and complicated than this, but those are the essentials. I asked if it did any good when I touched him, when I talked to him. The neurologist said nobody knew for sure, but there were studies that showed a higher percentage of recovery for coma patients who had been stimulated. It was enough for me. I decided right then that Jensen would wake up, and that I would be there when he did. I asked if I could have more than fifteen minutes every four hours with him in the ICU. There was little Dr. Omundson could do, the rules were strict: there were other patients and the nurses were busy. However, if the next twenty-four hours showed that Jensen was stable, he could be transferred to the intermediate care neurological unit and I would have easier access.

As for the baby, she seemed not to have suffered from Jensen’s aneurysm rupture or the surgery that had followed. Jensen showed no signs of early labour. Dr. Omundson was working with our androcologist. Dr. Cortese had looked devastated by what had happened to Jensen. We had a meeting in private, and we talked for a long time. Some of the drugs that were given to Jensen could affect our baby’s development, or trigger an early labor, but there was no way around it. Jensen’s life hung in the balance and he needed to receive the proper care. Dr. Cortese told me there were some cases where mothers or carriers had given birth while in a comatose state. That part, I didn’t want to think about. Because there were still three months to go, and I was certain Jensen would be awake by then. I needed to believe it.

Two weeks passed. Jensen went from the ICU to the intermediate neurological care, then was transferred to the neurology ward – a huge department split in two part, the second one being reserved for comatose patients. It was a quiet place with individual rooms –all of which had windows overlooking a courtyard. For me, it looked like a place where people were cared for like plants, waiting for the day they would be unplugged, or simply wasted away. I know it wasn't fair, and I feel ashamed about it now because I got to know the staff pretty well. But at the beginning, it was so upsetting to have my husband settled there like he would stay forever that I had trouble breathing. I could be with him as long as I wanted, both night and day, which was what I did. Also, more than one of us at the time could visit him. He wasn’t plugged in to that many machines anymore. The baby monitor was gone since she was doing okay, but a nurse still checked her once a day. 

While Jensen was still in intermediate care, they had taken him off the respirator, and it had gone well. It was a good sign. I knew Dr. Omundson was happy about it. I remember thinking that maybe it would change things, that once the breathing machine was out of him, he would blink and awaken, but of course, it didn’t happen. He still had three different IV lines, one of which was installed in the crook of his neck. The sensors measured his vital signs. Once a day, they would plug smaller sensors on his head and take measurements of his brain activity. He had a catheter and a diaper. When I discovered it, I had to leave and clear my head. Of course, I knew Jensen wasn’t able to take care of his most basic needs, but knowing that and seeing a twenty-three year old man wearing a diaper, are two very different things.  
For the time being, Jensen was fed with an intravenous solution, but if the coma continued, they would have to use a feeding tube and, given the look on the nurse’s face when she told me about it, it wasn’t something to look forward to.

Of course, I didn’t think it would come to that. Every morning when I walked into the room, I told myself that this was the day, the day Jensen would wake up, open his eyes, look at me, and ask what the hell had happened. 

I refused to consider any other options. I was always with him, leaving late in the evening and coming back before the sun was up. My parents took care of the house. Felicia spent most of her days with me because she could –she wasn’t working and college was done for the summer. Ty came right after work and stayed until the evening, Gil did the same. None of us talked much. I suppose it’s because we were scared of what the others were thinking. 

Ty was heartbroken. It was difficult for me to even look at him when he sat with Jensen. He was a tough-looking man, but I knew he had a big heart and that in his mind, Jensen was his son. He didn’t show much emotion, didn’t talk much, but one day, as I was coming back from a coffee run, I heard him speak. We were both alone with Jensen that evening. It hadn’t been a good day. Jensen had run a low grade fever and it had worried everyone, from the nurses to the doctors. They’d given him antibiotics while waiting for the blood test results. His fever had broken around five in the afternoon.

Hearing Ty’s voice, I froze. I didn’t want to interrupt him, and even though I felt like a voyeur, I couldn’t leave either.

“… you’re my boy, my courageous, wonderful boy. Remember how hard it was when you first came to live with me, son? You didn’t want to get attached, you didn’t want to speak with Felicia or Gil. You tried so hard to be tough. I knew you weren’t, not really. You needed to feel like you belonged. I saw you change over the months, Jensen. I saw you open up and smile and… It took time before you really believed I wouldn’t get rid of you, but after that I saw who you really were, a sweet, intelligent boy without an ounce of nastiness in him. It’s so unfair what’s happening to you, boy. I can’t…”

Ty stopped. I heard a loud, hiccupping sound, and I knew he was crying.

“… I’ll be here every day, you hear me? I’ll be right here with you. There are people who love you, Jensen, people who want you back. Please.”

After that, I did step away because I was crying, and I knew if Ty was as well, he didn’t want anyone to witness it. 

My father left ten days after their arrival, but my mother stayed. She was retired and she didn’t want to leave me alone. She came to the hospital with me and made sure I had clean clothes, that I was eating –even though it felt like I would never be hungry again- and taking care of myself, to a modest degree. To me, she was just a moving figure. They all were. My focus was entirely on Jensen and the baby. I didn’t even know if I still had a job, if the bills were getting paid. I didn’t care.

 

It was July 17th and it hadn’t rained for days. It was hot and despite the fact that Jensen’s room rarely received direct sunlight, I was sweating, even while wearing a thin t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Jensen wasn’t too hot. He never was. He tended to be cold and needed to be kept warm, because he didn’t move much, except for when the physical therapist came to manipulate his body for his muscles not to cramp and suffer from atrophy. 

I remember it was early afternoon. I was sucking on a popsicle and rubbing Jensen’s stomach, discussing out loud what name we should give our daughter. We didn’t have time to talk about it seriously before and I liked to imagine how he would have answered me. I liked the classic names that never went out of style, like Sarah, or Mary, and I was pretty sure Jensen would want something more unique. I was kind of having fun with myself, and the Jensen who was alive and well in my head. I don’t think I was doing well, psychologically, but hey, is that surprising? 

I'd developed the habit, early on, of leaving one of my hands on Jensen’s stomach, because then I would be able to feel when our little girl moved. It was always very emotional whenever she kicked or pushed against my hand, she was so alive while Jensen was so immobile, so far away. I would get close and speak directly to Jensen’s belly, because I wanted our daughter to feel like I was there with them. That afternoon, she was quiet, and I was lost in my blabbering about names so the sudden movement I felt took me by surprise. It wasn’t her usual soft push, it was way stronger, and when I lifted my head I realized it wasn’t her.

Jensen’s eyes were open. He was breathing almost convulsively, like he couldn’t get enough air. I froze.

I think my popsicle fell to the floor.

“Jensen?”

He didn’t move, but his eyes… slowly, oh so slowly, searched for me, for my voice. He croaked something. I burst out crying and bent over him, took him in my arms. I must have made a lot of noise because soon, a nurse came running.

Minimal conscious state, that’s what Dr. Omundson told us later that afternoon, while I sat with Ty in another impersonal waiting room. I hadn’t wanted to leave, but there were tests to perform, a brain scan to be done, and I had so many question the waiting was torture, literally, like I could feel it in my bones, an itch, impossible to scratch.

Jensen had looked at me and said something. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t done anything other than look at me. A few minutes later, his eyes had closed, and I had lost it, shaking him by the shoulders, pleading with him to come back. It took two orderlies to get me out of the room. Even then, I was a shaking mess until Ty arrived. He’d calmed me down as much as he could.

When Tim –we were on first name basis by then- arrived, I felt like I had been holding my breath for hours. He sat in front of us and smiled.

“He’s in what we call a conscious minimal state.”

“So he’s awake?” I asked.

“It’s… more complicated than that, Jared, but before I go on, I want you to know this is good news. This is excellent news. I wasn’t expecting this. The bleeding in the brain resorbed nicely, but with an event like a ruptured aneurysm, more than sixty percent o patients die within minutes.”

“Okay, I get it, but he’s doing better, right?”

“He is.”

“Did he speak? What did the brain scan show? Can he move, does he know where he is?”

Ty put his hand on my arm. “Jay, let the doctor talk, please.”

“A minimal conscious state is the lighter state of a coma. What it means, basically, is that Jensen is… kind of conscious, even if his interactions are minimal. He’s not exactly awake. He can’t hold a conversation or speak whole sentences. He can’t feed himself, can’t control his bladder either, but he has a certain awareness of his surroundings.”

“And…?” I didn’t really understand. Was a minimal conscious state similar to being very sleepy? Was it temporary?

“Sometimes he’s going to appear to be there, all of him, sometimes he’s going to be less conscious. Minimal conscious state varies for every patient. What’s really encouraging is that most of the time, it’s a transitional state. To full awareness.”

“So he could recover, right? He will recover.”

Tim lifted one of his long-fingered hands. “We can hope. There is no absolute certainty, Jared, when it comes to brain injuries. There is so much we still don’t know. We can guess, we can go through statistics, but the truth is, each individual is unique and the way he or she will heal, or not, is as well. But what the hell, let’s be positive about this, alright? You can go see him. He was tired after all the tests and he fell asleep, but don’t worry, it’s normal.”

I asked Ty to come with me, but he said he would call the others and that I should go first. I did.

I entered my husband’s room and there he was, as immobile as before, his eyes closed, lying on his back, with the head of his bed lifted to a forty-five degree angle. Over the past two weeks, his physical appearance had changed. He had lost some weight, his skin was pale, his eyes sunken and his lips chapped, almost as pale as his skin. His hair was plastered on his head. He was shaved, but only because I did it every other day. Jensen never had much facial hair and never let it grow anyway.

I walked softly to him and lowered the bed rail so that I could sit near him. I took his hand and waited. It wasn’t long before I felt it. His fingers, moving against mine. It wasn’t much, but it was there.

“Hey, babe,” I whispered.

His eyes moved behind his eyelids. He grimaced, like it was too much, trying to open his eyes.

“You can sleep, it’s okay. I’ll be right here next to you.”

There was a gasp, and Jensen’s eyes flew open. He looked at me. He was confused, and lost, probably not entirely there.

“Hey, you. I missed you, so much.”

“Yeah,” Jensen whispered in a raw, low voice.

“How are you feeling?”

He frowned. “Yeah,” he repeated. 

“Hey, it’s okay, baby. It is. Ty is here with me, he’ll come see you.”

“Yeah,” Jensen repeated for the third time.

His eyes left mine. He looked up, doing this strange thing with his fingers in my hand, like he was trying to beat the rhythm to an inaudible sound.

Then, as suddenly as he had opened his eyes, he started crying in a way he never had before. Not that Jensen had gone around crying daily ever since we’d met, but the few time it had happened, it was almost silent. Tears were quick to flow, but he used to hold back any sound except for hiccupping intakes of breath. Not this time though.

His face crumbled and he wailed, he wailed, letting out loud, raspy sobs, tears flowing down his face, clear snot coming from his nose, his lower lip trembling. I tried to guess what was wrong, I talked to him, took him into my arms as much as I could, nothing worked. It was like he couldn't hear me.

That’s the moment I started to understand what a minimal conscious state really was.

_____

Jensen wasn’t awake. A part of him was, but there weren’t moments when he would “be” completely there. It took me some time to get used to it. When he looked at me, he was looking at me. When he smiled, it was because he felt good, comfortable. The contrary was true for when he was in pain, confused, sad. That was the hardest. It was very difficult to know what he was feeling, and why. Having him wince and try to move a leg, we could help him immediately to move into another position, but when everything seemed to be okay and he started crying or moaning, it broke my heart. Not only mine. Most of the time, Fel would cry with him. Ty or my mom would take his hand, murmur soothing words, patient like only a parent could be, I guess. Gil… Gil had to leave the room. By how shy he was, and how otherwise occupied I was, I was not the one to receive his confidences. It was Ty who told me how hard it was on him. Gil had been twenty-one when Jensen moved in to live with them, and he always felt like he had a responsibility toward Jensen, like a big brother would. “He doesn’t know how to handle this,” Ty told me. “I know he’s drinking. I’m trying to keep a close eye on him ‘cause his mother was an alcoholic. I’m scared it’s going to spiral out of control.”

I wish I could have helped, but I wasn’t much better. I hadn’t gone back to work since Jensen's coma. Danneel had come to the hospital a couple of times, and she’d told me my job would be waiting for me whenever I was ready to come back. Until then, I earned no money and we didn’t have any savings. At the beginning of August, my mom sat with me and showed me the bills she’d paid. I was dumbstruck, almost shocked, to realize that even when your whole universe is collapsing, the rest of the world keeps going on as usual. It’s a feeling that everyone who’s lost someone, who’s been through a loved one’s long sickness, will understand. Sometimes, only seeing a girl and a boy walking on the sidewalk holding hands would make me so damn angry. How dare they look so carefree when I could lose everything that had ever been important for me? Silly, right? But I was mad at the world. 

I apologized to my mom. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even imagine going back to work and leaving Jensen’s side for long hours. I just couldn’t. She told me it wasn’t what she was asking of me. She told me she’d spoken with Ty and that they were taking care of it. I needed to be with Jensen and our daughter. I cried. Let’s just say, I had spilled so many tears since the beginning of July that I had stopped trying to hold them back. 

My little sister was there. She’d just arrived for the week and she was crying too. I was supposed to take her to the hospital the next morning and, for a moment, I wasn’t sure Megan would be able to go through it. She hadn’t seen Jensen day after day, and I had no doubt she would be in shock.

When she went to bed that night, my mom took me aside. She had this expression that told me she wanted to talk about Jeff, and god forgive me but I just wanted to tell her to shut up.

“He called again.”

“So.”

I was cleaning the kitchen, trying not to look at her, trying not to snap. Jeff had been calling me on a regular basis ever since Jensen had been admitted, and I had never answered. I didn’t want his pity, I didn’t want anything from him. I had looked up to him ever since I was a little kid and his rejection, after my coming out, still hurt.

“Jared, people change, you know.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

I was angry. I stopped and lowered my head. I apologized. 

“I know that's not true, you do care, and I know he’s the one in the wrong. You know your father and I have always supported you, but he regrets it, baby, so much. He’s really, really sorry.”

“Why? Because my pregnant husband is in a coma? Guess what, mom, I’m sorry too.”

I left the kitchen. I didn’t even want to think about Jeff. He didn’t deserve it.

I warned Megan about Jensen on the way to the hospital, early the next morning. He might say hi to her, or be completely oblivious. He made faces, sometimes moving his arms and legs, or trying to sit up, but nothing was really coordinated. He had a tube attached to his nose that fed him because he wouldn’t eat. He wasn’t conscious enough to eat. He wouldn’t drink either. It was too dangerous. They'd tried, with a straw, and even though he seemed to know what to do with it, he had choked badly on the water. “It’s like he’s in between.”

“But what… what about the baby?”

“She’s doing fine. Our androcologist comes on a regular basis to follow her development.”

We were in the elevator, and she pressed herself against the wall, like she wanted to protect herself from an invisible danger.

“But what… How will she come out?”

I snorted and took her arm to drag her out of the elevator. “How do you think? Do I need to give you the Talk?”

“That’s not what I mean, I’m not stupid. What will happen when it’s time for her to be born and Jensen is… if he’s still in that kind-of half coma?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. That was another thought I always pushed to the back of my mind and I wasn’t ready to give it a place in front. Not then.

“He will be awake. He’s getting better, Meggie. He’s going to give birth to our baby like any other person would.”

She blushed, because my tone had been harsher than I intended. I wanted to apologize, but we were walking in front of the nurse's station and I had to get the news about Jensen’s night. Annie, the head nurse, looked at Jensen’s charts to read the night staff's notes.

“He slept most of the night. He woke up at four o’clock. He was uncomfortable because of acid reflux. He was given medication to help and he went back to sleep after that. His vital signs have just been taken and they’re normal.”

“Thank you, Annie.”

I introduced her to my little sister and we went to Jensen’s room. He was still in a sitting position. It was better for his blood flow and breathing as the pregnancy was progressing and the baby taking more space. Later in the day, he would spend some time in an orthopedic chair. He also had daily visits from the physical therapist. The most important thing right now was to be sure he didn't lose any more weight and moved as much as he could. It was crucial, for his health as well as the baby’s.

“Hey, Jensen, I have a visitor with me this morning.”

He was awake. He turned his head slowly toward us, a blank expression on his face. They were having trouble keeping his feeding tube in place. It went through his right nostril and was held with way too many layers of tape. The skin around it was red and irritated. He had a fading bruise on his chin. He’d hit himself on the bedrail while shifting position. He looked sick. He _smelled_ like sickness. Fuck, I loved him so much that every time I came back after a few hours away it was like getting a punch in the guts. 

By the way Megan took a step back, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

“Hi Jensen,” she said in a tiny voice that made her sound way younger.

Jensen blinked. “Hi Jensen,” he articulated slowly.

Megan took a shuddering intake of breath, then she burst out crying, hiding her face in her hands. I took her by the shoulders. “It’s okay, Meggie, I know it’s hard, it’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” she stuttered, sniffing. “No it’s not, he looks so…”

“Hey, he’s right here. He can hear us, alright?”

Jensen was staring at Megan, and I could see his face crumble. He had sympathetic responses, which meant he knew Megan was crying, and if I didn’t get her out of the room soon, he would be crying too.

“Hi,” he repeated, and I could almost feel his empathy. 

Instead of taking Megan away, I grabbed her hands and forced them away from her face.

“See? He knows what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry, Jensen,” she said, trying to hold back her tears. She walked the few steps that separated them and, to my surprise, she wrapped her arms around Jensen’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry, it’s not fair, I’m sorry for crying,” she whispered, kissing his cheek.

“Yeah,” Jensen said, but he wasn’t on the verge of crying. 

“You can hug her back,” I told him very slowly, very clearly.

Sometimes, Jensen would answer to direct commands. They had to be simple, and it always depended on how with us he was.

He stretched out an arm, shaky and unsteady, and let it rest on Megan’s back. “Yeah,” he murmured, like it was everything that needed to be said. 

_____

Tim Omundson had hoped Jensen would transition quickly from his minimal conscious state to complete consciousness. Hell, we all hoped for it. It didn’t happen. August passed, then it was suddenly mid-September. Jensen was in a stable state. He wasn’t getting better, nor worst. He was into the thirty-fourth week of his pregnancy and his belly was the only thing getting bigger. Tim Omundson and Genevieve Cortese worked together to make sure he received enough nutrients, but the truth was, he was thin, thin to the point where he looked emaciated. It was strange, seeing his belly protruding, large and full and firm, as he himself seemed to shrink. Jensen had problems with the feeding tube. It had to be taken out on a regular basis because he had so much reflux it sometimes made him throw up. It was a concern. He might aspirate his own vomit and literally drown in it. The fact that he was pregnant, with his belly pushing up toward his stomach, didn’t help. When he was given a few days off the tube, the I.V. hyper alimentation had to be enough. 

I was in a bad place. I had been so full of hope in July, when he had regained some consciousness, but as the days, then the weeks passed, it was hard to keep my hope alive. Felicia refused to go back to college in September. She was the one, after me, who spent the most time with Jensen. She too had lost some weight, and that spark that had always been in her eyes was gone. Even her red hair seemed less flamboyant than usual. It was like in the Sleeping Beauty tale, Jensen was lost in his semi-sleep, and it was like a spell had been put on everyone around him, like we were all caught in it, wasting away with him. 

The baby was coming, and I wasn’t ready. I wanted Jensen to be excited, to walk around showing his belly. I wanted to organize a baby shower for him, to help him in and out of the car while he complained that he was getting enormous. 

Sometimes in the evening, I climbed in bed with him and helped him get on my lap, and then I would hold him and put his hand on his belly with mine. I would tell him that our little girl needed him, that he had to be ready, to come back for her, because he’d wanted her for so long. One of those evenings, he said “baby” after I said it, and he kept repeating the word, his hand tightening on his belly, and I knew he was aware, much more aware than he could show me. It didn’t make things easier. It made them worse.

Around that time, Dr. Cortese asked me if we could have a talk. She’d just done a sonogram and measured Jensen’s belly. He tried to get away from her. He was tired, he was uncomfortable, and despite the nurse constantly wetting his lips and mouth with water, he’d started to have sores inside his mouth. They were probably very painful.

I left Felicia with Jensen and followed the androcologist to a small room. We sat.

“It not easy, is it?” She asked me softly.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Jared.” She paused. We were on a first name basis as well. I sometimes got the impression I knew half the staff of the hospital on a first name basis. 

“We need to talk about the birth.”

I'd known it was coming. It didn’t made it any easier.

“I know, I just can’t…” I shook my head. What was left to say that she didn’t already know?

“Do you know what will happen if Jensen goes into labor now?”

“You… are going to try and stop it?”

“Yes, but it’s possible we won’t be able to. To tell you the truth, Jared, I’m surprised by how far along in the pregnancy Jensen has gotten. In these cases, there is a high likelihood that the parturient will go into premature labor. If your daughter were to be born today, she would have excellent chances to survive and to be perfectly healthy. You have to prepare yourself, Jared. Jensen might not be fully awake when he gives birth.”

“Will the c-section affect him? Is it risky?”

“There won’t be a c-section, unless we don’t have any other choice.”

It was like she was speaking nonsense. “What are you saying?”

“When a comatose parent goes into labour we let it happen naturally, if possible.”

“What? But how is he supposed to give birth? He can’t… Most of the time he’s not even there.”

“His body will know what do to. It’s difficult to believe, but there is no problem for a comatose patient to give birth. He’ll push the baby out just as if he was awake.”

The image shocked me. I had to restrain myself from yelling. “Are you serious? He’ll be in pain, he won’t even know what’s happening! A c-section-“

“Presents greater risks,” Genevieve cut me off calmly. “It’s an invasive procedure. Trust me, Jared, when I tell you that a natural birth is, by far, the best solution. I wouldn’t put Jensen through this otherwise. We can administer painkillers. I’ll do everything in my power to keep him as comfortable as possible.”

“I want to be there,” I stated firmly.

“You will. Of course you will.”

I left the room then. Now that it was out in the open, I couldn’t stop thinking. I had pushed it to the back of my mind for as long as I could.

I had to come to terms with the possibility that I might have a new born to care for and a husband in a minimal conscious state at the hospital. And if our baby was born while Jensen was still sick, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t take care of our daughter while spending my days at the hospital with Jensen, I couldn’t rely on Ty and my parents to pay the bills forever. I would have to go back to work, eventually, I would have to raise our daughter on my own for an indeterminate amount of time. 

_Maybe forever. Maybe he’ll never get better than he is right now,_ a very disagreeable voice murmured in my mind.

Life had to go on, for me, afterward, despite Jensen being frozen in that in-between state of consciousness. 

I couldn’t take it. 

I went home and found my mom in the living room, watching some TV. As soon as she saw me, she shut it off. “Has something happened, Jay? Baby?”

I was hyperventilating. I tried to speak, to explain to her that I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to do it. She tried to calm me down, but anything she said sounded like she was speaking an alien language. I was that close to a panic attack. I knew what a panic attack felt like because I'd had a few the months before my official coming-out. I tried the counting trick. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and on, and on, but I had used it so many times since Jensen’s aneurysm rupture it didn’t work anymore. My mother made me sit and put my head between my legs. A few moments later, I felt a cold wet towel on my neck. It did some good. At least my breathing returned to normal, but the hurt, the pain… they wouldn’t go away.

“I can’t do this without Jensen, mom. I don’t want to. I don’t want to, you hear me?”

My mother was rubbing soothing circles on my back, just like when I was a little kid. “I know, but you will if you have to. For Jensen.”

“You can’t stay here forever!”

“Why not? Your father is finally learning to cook for himself and Meggie,” she joked. “I’ll stay as long as you need me. I’ll be there when your daughter is born and I won’t leave until you throw me out. As for your work, we’ll figure something out. You won’t be alone in this, Jared, I promised you.”

Later, much later, when I was finally calm enough, she spoke to me for a long time, and I listened. She asked me what still needed to be done before the baby’s arrival. We made a list. Nothing had been done on the room since that July day. It needed to be finished. There were clothes to buy, some furniture, diapers, baby formula. My mother put some things on the list I had no idea were necessary for a newborn. It was scary, but I didn’t have a choice anymore. I had to face it. There was no time left.

I fell asleep crying, holding one of Jensen’s sweatshirts. His smell had washed out a long time ago, but it was all the comfort I could get.

A couple of days after that conversation, Gil, Felicia and my mother finished the nursery. My mother used Jensen’s car to run errands and get everything we had written down on the list. I didn’t really help. I told myself I didn’t have time, that I had to be with Jensen, but the truth was, I wanted to stay as far away from anything that reminded me my daughter was coming, and soon. It now seems very selfish of me, and I sometimes wonder how the people around me put up with it, but they did. They were there every step of the way. Even someone I didn’t want to be there showed up.

My brother.

It was almost October and I had left the hospital to grab something to eat. Ty was with Jensen. I didn’t like to leave him alone during the day, when he was awake, even with the nursing staff around.

I came back less than an hour later. I heard a conversation coming from Jensen’s room, and I was expecting to see Gil, or Frank, one of the male nurses. 

Not Jeff. 

He looked shaken. He was speaking to Ty, standing close to Jensen’s bed. Jensen was looking at the both of them, a blank expression on his face, licking his chapped lips. Seeing Jeff so close to him triggered something in me, a bout of rage I didn’t even know I could muster. I walked straight toward him, pushing Ty out of the way, and took his arm.

“You have no right to be here,” I told him, dragging him away from the bed. “You have no right, do you hear me?”

“Jared, wait, calm down, I’m sorry, I couldn’t… I couldn’t not come…”

“Jared,” Ty warned, trying to get me to stop.

“You get out of here, I don’t want you near my husband, you fucking asshole, never…”

We were close to the door. I was yelling. Jeff didn’t resist, didn’t try to add anything else. I had trouble keeping up, I was shaking so badly.

“Jared, you have to calm down, Jensen doesn’t like this,” Ty cut me off, and I saw the distressed look on my husband’s shallow face, his eyes filled with tears. It only made everything worse. I pushed Jeff with all the force I could gather and he fell backward in the corridor, his back hitting the opposite wall.

“Jay, calm down.”

“What? What did you say to me?”

“I want to help, let me help.” 

“I don’t need your help, Jeff. I don’t need anything coming from you.”

We were starting to gather attention. I didn’t care. “You let me down. You rejected me because I was… what was it that you said? A fag. A fucking fag! And now you think because my husband – my pregnant husband - is in a coma, we can forget everything and be brothers again? Is that what you think?”

“Jared, I will ask you to keep your voice down,” a nurse –Annie, I think- told me. “Please don’t make me call security.”

“I’m sorry, Jare. I’m really, truly sorry. I was stupid,” Jeff said.

“You get away from here. I don’t want your apologies.”

I backed off. All the rage that had suddenly built up in me was gone. I didn’t want to worry about Jeff, not for the time being. I wanted to be with Jensen.

“Go Jeff, please. I don’t want to deal with this right now.”

Jeff nodded. I turned my back on him, didn’t even see him leave. It took some time, before I agreed to speak to him again. What can I say? Jensen can be persuasive when he puts his mind to something.

In the room, Ty was speaking softly to Jensen. He was still crying, and I hated myself for that.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.

“Don’t be,” Ty told me. “Your brother thought you would react like this. Just think about this, Jared. We never know what life will throw at us. Maybe sometimes it’s better to make peace.”

I nodded. I sat on the bed and took Jensen into my arms until he calmed down. It took a long time, maybe because it took me a long time to calm down as well.

 

 

It was October fifth, in the middle of the night. When my cell phone rang, I fell off the bed in my haste to answer. I had feared phone calls in the middle of the night ever since July, and my heart was beating so fast it was deafening when I answered.

It was Jane, one of the night nurses. I must have started panicking when she announced herself and babbled something because she told me, very calmly, that everything was alright. “We think Jensen might be in labor. You should come. I’ve already called Dr. Cortese and Omundson.”

In my haste to get ready as quickly as possible, I think I might have hung up without answering her. I woke up my mom. I was terrified. I don’t remember anything from there until the moment I found myself running through the Neurological wing. Dr. Cortese was already there, standing near the nurse's station. I almost bumped into her.

“How is he?”

“I just had him transferred to the obstetrical department, he is in the first stage of labor. Contractions are steady at ten minutes apart. He’s almost two centimeters dilated.”

“Okay what floor?”

“I was about to go. Come with me.”

The nurses who were present wished me luck. I felt like I had a fever, it seemed surreal to be at that point where Jensen was actually about to give birth. I was torn between the excitement of finally holding my baby daughter in my arms and the sorrow of Jensen being in the state he was. He’d waited for this baby for so long.

In the elevator, Genevieve rubbed my arm. “It’s going to be okay, Jared. Jensen was going to hit his thirty-seventh week tomorrow, the baby is considered full term. I checked her position and she’s still perfectly seated with her head toward the cervix.”

“Was he in pain when you saw him?”

“He seemed uncomfortable when he had a contraction, but nothing more. We’ll monitor him closely, don’t worry.”

“Yeah well, I can’t help it.”

“I know. I’ll be there with you guys every step of the way. Dr. Omundson is with Jensen as we speak.”

The obstetrics ward was quiet. The nurse who welcome us said Jensen was the only patient in active labor that night. We followed her to a large room that had a wall cutting through it. “The other side is used for the delivery,” Genevieve explained. “When your daughter is born the wall can be opened and everything needed to welcome her will be accessible.”

I barely heard her. I was walking toward Jensen who was partly hidden from me by Tim’s long silhouette. He was checking Jensen's pupillary reactions. A baby monitor had been installed over his belly, the vital signs displayed on a small screen. Jensen’s and the baby’s heartbeat could be heard dually. He was settled in a semi-sitting position. I finally saw his face. He was awake and frowning at Tim. He saw me and smiled. It didn’t happen often and it touched me every single time.

“We’re gonna have a baby, Jen", I told him, taking his hand.

“Yeah,” he said, and by then, I knew “yeah” could basically mean anything. 

I saw that he didn’t have his nasal tube and that a new IV drip had been installed in the crook of his arm. Tim smiled at me. “He’s doing well, Jared.”

Jensen groaned suddenly. Genevieve got closer and showed me the paper that was coming out of the baby’s heart monitor. A steady line was drawn on it. “Look, Jared. That’s how we can measure the contractions and their strength. One is just starting now.”

I saw the line starting to rise on the paper. I turned to look back at Jensen. He grimaced, his hands closed into fists and opened again in a quick motion. He let out a small moan, looking at me with big, surprised eyes.

“The contraction is reaching its peak,” Dr. Cortese announced. 

“It’s okay, Jen, you’re doing good," I told him, caressing his cheek.

I saw the moment he started relaxing. His cheeks were red. It had been so long since I'd seen any color on his face.

“…And it’s done,” Genevieve said. “You have to relax between the contractions, Jensen, it will be easier for you.”

It was one of the reasons I liked her so much. She always addressed Jensen normally, like a person, not a confused comatose patient.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

“The first phase of labor usually takes time. I don’t think he’s in that much pain, so I would wait before giving him any drugs, what do you think, Dr. Omundson?”

“I agree. For now, it’s better to let it happen naturally.”

“What I suggest is you stay with him and comfort him when a contraction comes,” Genevieve told me. “A nurse will come every half an hour to monitor the contractions, and I’ll check him in maybe two hours.”

“Two hours?”

“Unless he shows signs that he’s progressing quicker. Checking the dilatation of the cervix isn’t exactly comfortable, Jared, and the first centimeters always take a while. What I want now is for Jensen to rest as much as he can, because he will need all the energy he can gather to give birth.”

“She’s right, Jared,” Tim added. “I’ll come back to evaluate him as well. I’m not going home, neither is Dr. Cortese. If anything happens, the head nurse will be able to join us immediately. It’s better for Jensen to be in a quiet environment. Alone with you.”

I nodded. I was a nervous mess. When they left, Tim pat me on the shoulder, which brought me ridiculously close to tears.

During our conversation, Jensen had started to doze off. I lowered the bed rail and got my chair as close to him as I could, holding his hand. When the next contraction came, his eyes shot open in surprised and he tensed, just like he had before. I don’t know to what extend he was conscious of what was happening to him, but it must have been scary as hell anyway. I spoke to him as softly as I could, and his eyes never left mine. When the contraction was over, he whimpered. “You’re good, you’re okay, I love you Jensen.”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“You can go back to sleep. Just close your eyes and rest. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”

There, in this room, with Jensen so close to me, I think I found some kind of peace. It took a long time for the dilatation to progress and the contractions to pick up pace. It was early in the morning when Genevieve Cortese checked him and saw that he was six centimeters dilated. By then, Jensen was fully awake and not in a good mood. He refused to look at me and moaned and groaned like a wounded animal during the contractions. I wanted so badly to believe that he knew he wasn’t suffering in vain but because he was about to give birth. The truth is I didn’t know. 

“Time to help him with the pain,” Genevieve told me. “I’m going to start with a light dosage of morphine and see how he reacts. We don’t want to sedate him too much. If it’s not enough I’ll give him another shot. And we should maybe help him into another position. He’s been like this for a long time.”

A nurse came to help me turn Jensen onto his side right after he received his first morphine dosage. He fought with all the will he could gather, but once he was settled, he sighed deeply. I washed his face with a cold towel. He leaned into the touch, his eyes focused on me.

“Jared,” he said.

It was the first time he’d said my name. I tried not to give it much thought. He had heard it many times, and just a few seconds before, when Genevieve Cortese has been speaking to me. Still, it shocked me. In a good way.

“Yes, right here, not going anywhere,” I told him.

“Jensen you are doing great,” Dr. Cortese said. She was looking at the contraction monitor, waiting for the next one to see if the morphine was starting to work. They were now five minutes apart and lasted longer. 

The contraction came, and Jensen’s face scrunched up, but he didn’t groan or let out any sound. He just breathed quicker.

“I think it’s working,” I told Genevieve.

“Jared,” Jensen repeated. 

He stretched his hand so that I could take it. That wasn’t usual. That had never happened. Even though Jensen would occasionally act on simple comments, he had no initiative.

I exchanged a look with Genevieve. She tried to hide her surprise from me, but I could see it all over her face.

I took Jensen’s hand, mine was trembling. “Yeah, okay,” Jensen mumbled.

Genevieve left the room, then. I lowered the bedrail and sat next to Jensen, running my fingers through his damp hair. “We’re getting there, you’re so brave, Jensen.”

Jensen licked his lips. “Whu-water?” he asked.

I froze.

“You want water, Jensen?”

He nodded at me. I wasn’t really thinking by then. I took the sponge from the glass on the table and let it rest on his lower lip. Jensen sighed, closing his mouth on it.

Then sucked, then swallowed.

“Oh my god, Jensen, you just drank some water,” I whispered in awe. “Do you want more?”

Another nod. 

Jensen drank, sucking the water from the sponge until there was barely anything left in the glass. Then he suddenly spit out the last mouthful, his eyes widening.

“Hurts, Jared,” he said, grimacing.

Another contraction. He was crushing my hand. I tried to grab the bell on the other side of the bed. I think I was laughing. It’s hard to put into words everything that went through my mind.

I didn’t grab the bell. Before I could succeed, Tim Omundson walked into the room, followed by our androcologist. 

“Something is happening, I think he’s waking up.”

“Jaaared,” Jensen moaned. “Huuuurts.”

“I know, baby, I know, it’s the contractions, you’re in labor.”

Everything was very confused for the following minutes. Tim got me out of the way and started asking Jensen questions. Genevieve was short of breath, she was smiling. 

“What’s happening? Is he…?”

Tim turned his head toward me, his long grey hair hiding half of his face. He was smiling too. “He’s awake, Jared.”

“What?”

“It’s something that has been seen before in comatose pregnant patients. Sometimes the body going through a trauma will shut itself down, basically, it puts itself into a coma to protect the fetus... or it remains in a comatose state, until it figures it is strong enough and the baby is safe. The human is a wonderful machine, don't you think? Jensen's brain has shut the machine down to a minimum so that the baby could develop normally, giving it all the resources available. 

"What?" I repeated.

"Healing from a stroke, waking up from a coma, it takes a lot of energy. Jensen's brain waited until the baby was ready to be born before shifting into high gear."

"It's... " I wasn't sure I understood. I didn't have the concentration capacity. "But he's awake."

Tim smiled and patted me on the back. "He is. It’s still early to assess your husband's state more specifically and I don’t want to do a full exam now. We’ll wait until after the birth. But don't worry, he's awake.”

“Jared,” Jensen called again. 

I walked past Tim and bent over my husband. I couldn’t know what was going through his head, and yes, I was scared, but also in awe. I was crying. 

“I’m here, Jensen.”

“Jared,” he repeated. “The b-bhu-baby is coming.”

“I know.”

“Hurts, I don’t… Whu-what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. You’ve been very sick. But you’re doing better.”

He was. He was confused, and terrified, but he was entirely there, with me. I could feel it, see it in his eyes.

"It hurts," Jensen repeated, trying to move on his own to find a more comfortable position. "I chu-can't... move..."

"Let us help," Genevieve said in a soothing voice. "All of this must be so scary for you, Jensen, but you're doing great. Concentrate on your baby. She's coming. And soon."

Now that Jensen was awake, there was no place for intimacy anymore. Two nurses were there with us, along with Tim and Genevieve. I felt dizzy, seeing how Jensen was lost in the middle of us, trying to figure out what had happened to him, what was now going on, why he was in such pain.

"The nursery," he murmured, grabbing my arm with both hands. "It's not f-f-fhu-finished."

"Yes, it is. Don't worry baby."

"I don't understand!" He yelled suddenly. 

"It's too much for him," I told Genevieve.

One nurse readjusted the fetal monitor. The other one took Jensen's blood pressure. Tim looked at the charts, scribbling something while standing at the foot of the bed.

"Okay," Genevieve said. "Everybody, out of the room."

Tim caught on immediately. He directed the two nurses out of the room, following behind them. Another contraction hit, a bad one, and Jensen tried to pull off the elastic belt that held the baby monitor in place.

"He's uncomfortable," Genevieve said. She lifted Jensen's hospital gown and unstrapped the monitor. Immediately, the machine started beeping loudly. She shut it off. Jensen, his face covered in sweat, twisted on the bed, groaning. 

"Jared, try to get him to listen to you. He needs to calm down," the doctor told me. "I really need to check him soon and I don't want to scare him even more."

I realized I had been paralyzed near my husband's bed, for how many minutes I did not know. It was the shock, I suppose. Anyway, I switched back into action. The contraction was coming to an end, and Jensen was still twisting on himself, like he wanted to get out of his own skin. I bent toward him and took his face between my hands, asking him to look at me. It took a few tries, but finally, his bloodshot eyes locked onto mine. They seemed huge.

"Jared," he whimpered.

"I know. Listen to me. I know. You've been asleep for a long time, you can't control your body, everything hurts. I'm so sorry, Jensen. Trust me, I was there every step of the way. Now, what's important is that our little girl wants out, and you can do this. We'll help you. You're gonna have a baby, the baby you've dreamed of since you were fourteen. And I'm here, I'm here and I'm not letting go of you."

Jensen burst out crying. I hugged him as tight as I could. "Let your body work. It knows what to do. Let us help," I whispered in his ear. He nodded, his head brushing against my cheek.

He was calm enough to be checked. He didn't even acknowledge Genevieve as she worked between his legs. He gripped my hand, his other one resting on his stomach. He repeated "baby", over and over again, and I don't know if it was to convince himself it was really happening or if he was speaking to our little girl.

He was eight centimeters dilated. Genevieve gave him another shot of morphine. I could see in her eyes that she was overwhelmed by the turn of events, that it had shaken her.

"This will help you with the pain, Jensen," she said in a shaky voice after giving the injection. "I'm sorry this is so hard on you."

"S-shu-so tired," Jensen murmured. 

"I know, honey, I..." She stopped herself, blushing. "Oh god, sorry, that wasn't really professional."

"Don't apologize."

Jensen moaned again, trying to grab my shirt. I bent over him and talked him through the pain. That's how the next hour went by.

It was early morning by then. The sun peeked through the drawn curtains. Jensen was fully dilated and even with the pain and the labor reaching the delivery phase, he was dosing on and off. It worried me. 

"It's normal," Genevieve told me. "Can you image how exhausted his brain is right now, let alone his body? The morphine is also having an effect on him, but don't worry. He's doing extremely well, considering."

I tried to believe her. The contractions were two minutes apart and they must have been the most painful ones, but Jensen only had enough energy to moan and whimper. When it was time to push and he was settled in an androcological position, he had trouble keeping his eyes open. Tim came back in the room, as well as two new nurses who opened the faux wall and prepared all the equipment needed to welcome the baby. 

Jensen pushed. He hadn't been told to do so, he didn't even seemed aware of it. His body was doing its job. It was scary. Tim must have seen the distress on my face because he took me aside, promising it would only take one minute.

"Jared," He said firmly. "Jensen isn't falling back into a coma. That's not how it works. He's awake. He's awake, do you understand me?"

I nodded. I think I was crying. I think the neurologist had just pointed out the fear I couldn't even admit to myself.

"Waking up from a coma is like running a marathon," he went on. "And there are so many things to take in, so many things Jensen doesn't understand right now, it's too much for him. He's exhausted, he's having trouble keeping up with everything. So he falls asleep, because he just can't do otherwise, his brain won't let him. No coma. Sleep. Exhaustion. The effects of the morphine. I need you to believe me."

And I did believe him. I don't know if it was because he'd been so convincing, or just that I couldn't bring myself to think it could happen. I stayed near my husband while his body pushed our little girl out. It didn't take long. Suddenly, a feeble cry filled the room and Genevieve held a tiny, bloody body wiggling between her hands. Jensen murmured inaudible words, shaking his head softly from left to right, but when the nurse lifted up his gown and settled the baby on his skin, he managed to open his eyes.

The nurse asked me to help hold the baby who was crying softly, so little and warm, her wet, bald head turning from left to right, rubbing against Jensen's skin.

"She's here," I said. "You did it. We have a daughter."

"My... my baby," Jensen murmured.

Then he succumbed to exhaustion.

_____

They were all in the waiting room: my mother, Felicia, Gil and Ty. When I walked in, they all stood up in a perfect ensemble. 

"It's a girl, she weights six pounds two ounces and she's perfect," I told them.

There were smiles, but sad ones. They all started to walk toward me for the traditional hugs and congratulations. I stopped them. I didn't know how to announce the other wonderful news. I felt like I was holding a delicate butterfly in my hands, that the faintest movement would tear it's wings apart.

I was scared. Scared that saying the words out loud would break the spell, and then I would go back in the room and Jensen would have this absent look, saying "yeah" to everything that was asked of him.

"Jensen is..." I started, and the few tears I had left wet my cheeks.

"Oh my god, no," Felicia paled so fast it seemed unreal, like she had become a cartoon character.

"No," I protested quickly. "He's awake. He's not in a coma or a fucking minimal conscious state. He woke up while he was in labor."

Felicia was the first to run toward me. She jumped in my arms. I remember her smell, I remember the way she held me, so tight. I remember I had to steady myself not to collapse under her.

Jensen slept most of the day. We had a room in the OB ward with a small plastic crib for the baby, but she never touched it. She slept in my arms with this cute pout on her lips that reminded me so much of Jensen. After everyone came in to see her, two by two, they went back home. Tim had told us that Jensen would go through a very rough time, realizing what had happened to him for the past three months, that he might still be confused, and that too many people around him would only add to his stress.

Around three in the afternoon, Jensen woke up. It wasn't the first time -he had gone through a couple of exams, had ask for some water, had even taken a look at our baby, but tiredness had pulled him back to sleep almost immediately each time.

Now, he looked at me, his eyes wide open.

"I had a baby," he rasped. 

"You did, Jen. Want me to bring her closer."

He shook his head. A tear slid down his cheek. "I can't. I... I don't... understand, I can't really move mhu-my arms, and everything is... Am I dreaming?"

"No, you aren't. Not anymore."

Jensen took a shuddering intake of breath and burst out crying again. "I don't know whu-what's happening, I don't understand, Jay, h-huh-help me please, I'm so scared..."

I put our daughter in her crib and lowered the bed rails while taking off my shoes. I climbed in beside him the best I could, taking him into my arms. I wanted him close, as close as he could be. He wrapped a shaking arm around me and shoved his head against my chest, letting out loud, desperate sobs.

"It's hard, I know," I told him. "But we're in this together. You and me and our baby. Everything is going to be alright."

I felt a confidence in my voice that had been absent for so long it hurt to realize how desperate I had become. Not anymore.

We named our daughter Hope. Cliché, I know, but no other name could have fit her better.

_____

_Holy shit._

_I don’t know if it was ever your intent for me to read this, Jared. It was resting on your desk, this huge pile of paper, and the first page caught my attention. Then, I couldn’t stop._

_Way to make me melt into a puddle of tears btw. God, I’m trying to be funny, only for my benefit._

_Here’s what I want to say to you. I never realized how hard it was for you when I was out. I thought about it. I thought about my family, and you, trying to imagine how you coped. It wasn’t immediately after I woke up. The days following Hope’s birth are foggy and vague in my mind. I had to put myself together again, and you know it wasn’t easy for either of us._

_Later though, I thought about those months. And even if I knew, on a cerebral level, that it must have been hard, no one ever told me how it was. Fel let out some comments, about how great you were through everything, but that was about it. I think it is something she doesn’t like to think about, neither does Gil, or Ty. You. You told me so many things, you keep telling me how strong I was, how difficult it was for me. And I told you, over and over, that you were the perfect husband, that I was so lucky to have you by my side. But… I never knew, not like this, you know what I mean?_

_Seeing myself through your eyes, your words, was an overwhelming experience. I want our daughter to read this one day-without the NC-17 passages, which were very few ;-) Can you believe it’s been four years? I wonder, since you obviously felt the need to write this down, how much it still affects you. I’m here for you, Jay, you don’t have to be strong all the time._

_I know you’re worried, I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. My last IRM showed no signs of the aneurysm coming back. It’s fixed. You were with me at every appointment I've had. Just because I’m pregnant again doesn't mean that a new aneurysm will appear out of nowhere._

_It sounds like I’m trying to convince myself. :D To tell you the truth, I might be scared and worried too. I’m still living with what it did to me, I will always live with it. We can’t live in fear, Jay, we have to go on. I can’t wait to feel the baby moving. I can’t wait to experience everything I missed while I was pregnant with Hope. And when I think of her, how amazing she is, I’m not scared any more. Can’t wait for her to meet her little sister –or brother._

_It’s like you left the story unfinished. I have no idea if your intention is to add another part, but I feel like I could tell the rest. You can decide what to do with it. I’m not as good of a writer as you are._

_Hope was born at ten minutes after seven early on the morning of October sixth. After that, I underwent a whole bunch of tests. Like I’ve said, I don’t remember a lot from that period. I remember you, and your mom, and my family, staying with me at the hospital. I was so confused, because I still had memories of that in-between time, only flashes, the sound of your voice, the feeling of being asleep and unable to wake up. Hope went home with you five days after her birth. I had to stay another month at the hospital._

_It was hard for the both of us. I know I was angry, and frustrated, not being able to take care of my daughter, to do what I used to do. Learning how to feed myself, trying to walk, to speak properly, dealing with the damn stuttering and the migraines and the weakness that affected my left side, throwing temper tantrums like a kid. You were so patient. Everyone was. You brought me Hope as often as possible. It must have been hell for you. I couldn’t worry about that, then. I was too caught up in my own issues, but the money, and the work, and taking care of me and Hope... I know I’ve thanked you for everything you did, more than once, but I don’t think it will ever be enough._

_My first week home is also my first true happy memory. I was coming back to myself, I had my baby with me, and you, and I was able to take stock, for the first time, to think about everything that had happened to us._

_You say it changed me. I know. I don’t hate the changes. I used to think so very little of myself, not that I’d admit it, but that’s how it was. I used to think I needed to enjoy everything as quickly as possible before it was taken away from me. Making a baby, it was my way to ground myself. A baby that would be mine, that no one could ever take away from me. I was always scared, you know, that one day, you would tell me that it was over, that you didn’t love me anymore. It’s stupid, even with the relationship we had –I had all the proof I needed to reassure myself- but it didn’t matter when I woke up in the middle of the night having trouble breathing and wondering when you would abandon me._

_Yeah… Written down, it seems so pathetic._

_I don’t think like that anymore. How could I, after all you’ve done for me? And I know I was always stronger than I dared to imagine. I don’t want to sound egocentric, but I’m proud of myself, of the way I was able to build myself back, to take care of Hope, to get my life back on track. It’s been a long road, right? But we made it._

_I know you love John Irving, and I’m going to write an epilogue like he would appreciate._

_Where are we now? You are still working at the same bank, and Danneel is one of our best friends. You’ve had a hard time forgetting how your brother treated you, and both of you are still trying to rebuild your relationship, but you’re getting there. I’m proud of you._

_Hope looks like you, except for the freckles. She’s a healthy four year old, she’s active, she loves animals and Disney Movies and the color green. She was disappointed when we told her I was pregnant because she would have preferred a puppy. ☺_

_I’m 16 weeks along, the baby’s due for Christmas. I know everything will be okay._

_Gil got married last year. He sells cars and he loves it, which is still a complete mystery to me. His wife, Briana, is as exuberant as he isn’t. We love her._

_Felicia is pregnant too, she’s six month along, she’s enormous, and she’s having a girl. She’s not married, but she and Fred love each other. It’s enough. She still lives here in Manchester. Ty helped her start her own practice. Fred is a mechanic. He fixes our cars on a regular basis._

_Ty retired two years ago, but not really. He breeds snow dogs and his reputation is growing. He had something going on for a while with a woman, but it didn’t work out. He tells me no one will ever replace Hannah, his deceased wife, and that he doesn’t want anyone to. I know was very hard for him when I got sick. I see it in his eyes everyday. I wish I could take his worry away._

_Your parents are doing good. Meggie is in college, she’s studying medicine and she wants to specialize in neurology. You keep saying it’s because of me. Your parents are so proud of her._

_I’m still a physical therapist. I’m a better physical therapist because, now, I understand what some of my patients have been through. I still suffer from the consequences of my aneurysm rupture. I have concentration problems, migraines, and I stutter whenever I’m tired. I have regained ninety percent of my strength in the left part of my body. Tim is impressed. I’m just glad I’m alive, there for you, and our daughter, about to bring another kid into the world._

_I’m going to stop now because I’m crying like a little girl and I miss you. Stupid accountant convention. I want you to be here with me, I want to hold you tight and tell you I’m not going anywhere and then do very NC-17 things with you._

_I love you, babe._

_Jensen._

 


End file.
